Strange Fruits

Day 349: If you think back, you may recall that in late May, I was out in the garden with my little paintbrush, tickling pollen from one Akebia vine and transferring it to another. Here are the results of that horticultural exercise. If you've ever tried to eat an Akebia fruit, you might be wondering why I bother. Well, the primary reason would have to be the oft-cited "because I can." Secondary to that is the fact that I've trained my taste buds to enjoy the subtly sweet flavour of this nearly impossible-to-eat fruit. It took a few years of repeated exposure. The pulp holds quite close to those myriad black seeds, and the only way to get it off is to put a spoonful in your mouth, squish the mass with your tongue until the soft parts semi-liquify, and then remove the slippery seeds from your mouth before swallowing. You wouldn't want Akebia vines growing out of your ears now, would you?

Akebia Abundance

Day 349: I think I let this experiment get away from me just a little bit, although I must say that my skill at hand-pollination is much improved over my early attempts. Here you see 21 Akebia fruits, each four to six inches long, chock-full of seeds and to a significantly lesser extent, a mildly sweet pulp which is very difficult to separate from them. The best procedure I have found is to put a teaspoon-sized mass on your tongue, roll it around until your saliva loosens the pulp, swallow it, being careful not to ingest any of the seeds which can then be spit into an empty rind for disposal. Ten more pods preceded these, and there are at least ten more still ripening on the vine. A slightly sweeter taste can be achieved by refrigerating the pods for a day or two before eating, but do not wait too long. They do not hold well once they have been picked. I probably won't be able to stay ahead of the crop at a consumption rate of 3-4 per day.